Summary of the very nicely written blog post from Al’s blog:
Al got 11 of 12 songs ready for his new album but didn’t have his “hit” yet. He waited until “Born this Way” came out, and came up with a concept for a parody. Since the song is a “human rights” song, he expected to give proceeds to the Human Rights Campaign. He asked Gaga (through her “people”) who said “gotta read the lyrics first.” Al came up with his lyrics (the song is called “Perform this Way”) and sent them off, only to be told “Need to hear the whole song first,” which sort of confused Al because she had the lyrics and she knew the song, but whatever. He NEVER pre-records a song to get an artists’ blessing but he took the risk and recorded it anyway. Then Lady Gaga said “no” after hearing it.
Al released the song on YouTube (frankly I think it’s a little boring) but it won’t get a video or make it on an album.
Lots of Gaga and Al fans on this board…what do you think?
Is the album already out? Maybe he’ll put it on anyways. Remember, he’s only asking to be nice, he doesn’t need their permission to do a parody. Of course, I get the feeling Al is a nice guy and if they say no, I’m sure he won’t put it on the album.
ETA, I’m guessing that’s the ‘demo’ version and the real version would be a bit…‘flashier’ Also, that seems like a song that wasn’t really meant to be heard on it’s own but accompanied by a video, or rather Weird Al dancing around in odd dresses.
Meh. It’s her song (that I didn’t really like anyway) and her choice to say yes or no. From what I understand, he can abide by that or not. I can’t bring myself to care one way or the other.
I really like Lady GaGa, and I ADORE Weird Al, so I was hoping this would be a nice amicable “I wanted to do this song but she thought a parody would be in poor taste, oh well” type thing. But it seems GaGa is being a bit of a bitch and that makes me sad. I wish she would relent, and maybe if this gets a bit of press she will.
All I can figure is Gaga takes herself far more seriously than I thought she did, and Al’s lyrics hit too close to home.
Does Lady Gaga really think she’s something other than what Al just described?
Besides, Al can write lyrics in his sleep, but apparently Gaga vomits them and spends weeks, months and years “honoring her vomit,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.
I guess Gaga prefers to be her very own self-parody and feels Al’s song would be redundant…
So to my knowledge, that brings the list of artists who have said no to an Al song parody up to 2: Lady Gaga and Prince. And, of course, there’s also the Coolio, Eminen, and James Blunt abberations as well, with their own unique backstories…
She would have to be insanely thin-skinned to be offended by that song.
She goes into the Weird Al Hall of Shame for the Humorless along with Prince and James Blunt’s record company. Most artists take Al parodying one of their songs as an honor, or a rite of passage at the very least.
The only way I can figure this is – and this actually seems pretty likely to me – she calculates every action she takes based on gaining maximum press coverage for it. Letting Weird Al do a parody of her song = a little press, but nothing major. Telling Weird Al he can’t do a parody of her song = lots of press, for at least a few days.
Joey P, Al says in his blog post that the video for the song was going to be awesome. I’ll agree that the song on its own is sort of meh for me. I mean, it’s not awful, but I’ve heard a lot better parodies from Weird Al.
I was surprised that no one had posted this to the Dope yet, and the YouTube video of the song only had 330 views!
I am not a huge fan of either artist (I think Al’s pretty fun and respect Gaga enough) and I heard this through my brother, who heard about it on his music geeks forum. Doesn’t seem like the story has “hit” just yet…but interesting theory.
The video has showed as having 330 views since several hours ago. I think it’s not updating for whatever reason. There are over 4,000 “likes” on it already.
